Absum
by effybelle
Summary: [Latin] [verb] I am away, I am absent. With death often comes the regret of not saying all you should have said, not doing all you should have done as you watch all the chances to rectify all the 'should haves' drip out from the cracks in your fingertips. But along with it also comes the hope that, perhaps, in another life, in another reality, the 'should haves' become 'did haves'.
1. Weltschmerz

[ **AN** ] Since the summary space given is so small, before I begin this story I would like to expand on the summary to fully express what this will be about.

[ Regret. It is a word, a concept often used in conjunction with the equally as human concept of death. A word that encompasses so many feelings - guilt, frustration, hope, sorrow - and rolls them into one. With death often comes the regret of not saying all you should have said, not doing all you should have done, and the sorrow, the guilt, the frustration comes along with it as you watch all the chances to rectify all the 'should have' drip out from the cracks in your fingertips. But along with it also comes the hope that, perhaps, in another life, in another reality, the 'should haves' become 'did haves'. The idealisations and dreams become reality.

After Asuka is surely to have met her match in her fatal defeat by the Eva series, maybe death and the reality in which we are absolved of all regrets are more interlaced than one may think. ]

This will take place during Human Instrumentality/Third Impact, and it basically details all the 'what ifs' in Asuka's life once she arrives in Japan, including the 'what if Asuka had just accepted her feelings for Shinji in the first place?' Thus, it is an AU almost retelling of the series that will slightly deviate from canon as the story progresses, as it will follow Asuka and Shinji in another reality, where they prevailed.

[ **Edit** ] Due to some suggestions from a very helpful and kind reviewee, Merchant of Blue Death, I have made some minor verb tense edits along with major punctuation and orthographic corrections. Feel free to offer anything else you may find will improve the comprehension and the flow of this story.

* * *

 **CHAPTER I: Weltschmerz**

[German]

[noun] a depressive state caused by an idealised vision of the world compared with the world's actual state

* * *

 _I don't want to die…_

Asuka was sure another voice greeted hers in a harmony that soothed her desperation. She was sure that the voice, though nothing louder than a whisper and nothing softer than silk, met her own, somehow perfectly accompanying her trembling, weak whimpers. Its familiarity washed over Asuka's frail form until any remnants remaining in her system were substituted with warmth – pure warmth. Its familiarity wrapped around Asuka. Its familiarity was a blanket, using which she could shield herself from the coldness of the world. It was everything she didn't know she needed.

Or maybe just everything she had never wanted to admit she needed.

 _You're still alive… you mustn't die yet…_

Unit-02's entry plug had always felt like home to Asuka. When she would tease Shinji about its resemblance to mommy's womb, she could never tell who she was trying to fool – herself, or him. In the seat of the Eva, her Eva, it felt moulded to her shape, a refuge to which only she could escape, she could belong. And it always felt warm, comforting, even if chaos reigned outside. It felt like something Asuka thought she recognised, but every time the memory began to come into focus it would slip away again. Until now. In this moment, a desperate one where she was begging no one but the oxygen and LCL around her to keep her alive, Asuka finally pieced together what the feeling that rushed over her every time she sat in her rightful designated pilot seat was – it was like being enveloped in her mother's embrace, within arms that hadn't held her for ten years.

Asuka had been so wrong, so very wrong, for those ten years. She had assumed her mother had left her, abandoned her, all traces ceasing to exist just like her life. But she had assumed wrong, and Asuka didn't like to be wrong. This was perhaps the only time she felt relief, no matter how vague, at being wrong. Her mother had never left. She was always there.

It was her voice Asuka was sure she heard. It felt so tangible, so _real,_ so her mother that Asuka was certain that, though disembodied, it was more than just a hallucination. Her mother was truly speaking to her. And for a second, Asuka was three years old again, before her mother took her life, before her vow to never cry again, before her piloting potential was recognised, before life was tough. The voice spoke to her in her native tongue, German, any harshness of the words softened by whispers and comfort only a mother knew how to implement into their tone.

 _I won't let you die… you must keep living…_

 _I don't want to die…_

 _You're alive!_

 _I don't want… to DIE!_

Her throat burned as the mantra she had been repeating helplessly into herself escaped as a shrill yell, a battle cry. Asuka had only convinced herself of her words to the halfway point; the destination was reached with her mother's help. It was the first time crediting someone else felt comfortable with Asuka.

And with the same, ferocious certainty Asuka had felt about the tangibility of her mother's voice, Asuka was sure she felt every fibre of her mother's velvet skin, the tight clasping after two hands met truly adding weight to Asuka's own palm, even through the skin-tight material of her plug suit.

She was fearless again, she was invincible again. She was Asuka again. And Asuka didn't go down without a fight.

* * *

Pain, searing pain, pain, pain, pain, oh God the _pain_ …

Asuka's left eye throbbed in its socket, even though the intense pain shaking through the nerves in her body made it seem like her eye was no longer there at all. Her back arched and she moaned in pain, a hand covering her left eye no matter how futile it was to dull the pain. Before now, a high sync rate with the Eva was suggested to be a good thing. It was supposed to be the pinnacle to which she was encouraged to reach. Only now did Asuka realise that nothing good was without its dangers.

It was pain that was more intense than any other pain Asuka had ever experienced, pain that surpassed any minor graze and injury Asuka had ever experienced before. All her past pain was pain, sure, but this exceeded what Asuka ever thought a human could physically endure without shutting down and succumbing; it was more than just the trauma of when an Angel violated her mind, and it was worlds, galaxies, more than the sharp ache of the abdominal muscles tightening to cope with an upset stomach or even the dull, centred ache of a period.

Asuka wasn't sure if the fact it was just a simulation of the pain that made it feel so insufferable was an advantage or not. Though she could look down with her uncovered eye and see, in a blurry haze, the pieces composing her abdomen and all inside it were perfectly intact, every pull of the inactive Eva Unit's grotesquely realistic intestines by the Eva Series felt like Asuka's own entrails were being ripped apart. They were vultures, circling around Unit-02's corpse before diving and swooping in to rip more of its insides apart until all that remained was nothing more than a stripped back, fleshless human caricature.

Asuka didn't want to admit it was over. The thought didn't even cross her mind – at least, she didn't notice if it did; if it had, it must have appeared in a flash lasting no more than a second. Nobody defeated Asuka Langley Soryu. Nobody tore her and her Eva apart, not her Eva-02. Not her… _mother…_

The single remaining part of her pride not shredded and torn from her by the Eva series compelled Asuka to raise her arm towards the sun, the Eva series circling her like hungry predators all she could focus on through the monitor. Her hand curled as if cupping them, grasping them, showing them exactly what she thought of them. The other hand still clasped over her eye, the desire to _destroy_ the ugly creatures swarming around her throbbing through her core with more intensity than the pain throbbing in her eye, and through grit teeth, Asuka snarled,

 _I'll kill you… I'll kill you… I'll kill you…_

Saying the words aloud, her breathing laboured and her tone firm despite the obvious trembling, convinced Asuka more, spurring her on, her hand rising higher until she was convinced by what she was saying enough to feel her body thriving. She had never been more alive. She was even sure her girl, her Eva-02, was returning to life and trying to activate as well. If her breath weren't so focused on promising the Eva series of their certain deaths by her hands, she would have smiled, maybe laughed, as the thought, 'That's Soryu women for you; stubborn' briefly crossed her mind.

But then, blankness. Blackness. Darkness. Nothing crossed her mind anymore.

Asuka was gone before she could even process her arm, her actual arm and not that of her Eva, had sliced in two. Separated in half. Asuka was gone before a countless amount of Lances impaled her Eva, as if they had not been satisfied with her just yet.

* * *

There exists a common phrase, a common idea surrounding the elusive albeit inevitable phase of death that suggests before death, all moments in your life exist simultaneously, concurrently, rather than consecutively or chronologically in the way to which the concept of time conforms. The idea that before death, or before a brush with death, events in life 'flash' before their very eyes, as if recalling a movie, milestones in their lives becoming nothing more than mere snapshots and footage that condense years, decades into seconds.

Asuka was aware of this phenomenon, though the cliché did not exist in the German language and thus she never heard it often, at least not when she resided in New Berlin. She had only been exposed to it maybe once, maybe twice; yet, it was exactly what she was starting to experience.

After all her thoughts, senses, and systems stopped functioning, Asuka slowly opened her eyes.

Was this death? It was a dark space, like the inside vacuum of a black hole. Asuka wasn't usually claustrophobic, not before, but she was now. The question resonated in her mind like an echo in a hollow hallway:

 _Was this death?_

Accompanied by,

 _Am I dead?_

She wasn't sure how much time had passed since… since she lost to the Eva Series. Maybe time didn't exist in this realm, wherever this realm was. Though all the pain had ebbed away, Asuka's body felt heavy and stone cold beneath her, like it wasn't attached to her head anymore. Curiously, she moved her right hand; as her fingers cracked open, pain shot down her arm like electricity. It was a cruel reminder of the fate it had suffered. So she wasn't completely healed. Maybe death hadn't taken her just yet.

For a while, there had been nothing, her mind as black as the space around her. When her thoughts returned to her, it was as if Asuka were watching her life in a movie, fourteen years abridged and sliced into just a few minutes, if not a few seconds. It was like having her mind defiled again, only she felt even less in control of her mind now.

She relived the first time she ever heard the words 'I love you' fall from her mother's mouth, and she relived the last time; she relived the first time her mother said her name, and she relived the last time; she relived the first time her mother held her tight in an embrace, and she remembered how quickly her mother's hands moved up… moved up to her neck, her fingers disappearing in Asuka's flesh as her mother whispered through harsh breaths, 'Die with me… die with me…'

She remembered the way her mother hung from the ceiling, the way her father was so quick to move on and present Asuka with a new mother, the way she learnt at the age of just four that people were replaceable items that could easily be discarded. The way she promised herself, at four, that she would never cry again, that she would be the best possible pilot the world had ever seen, because then… because then…

Maybe she wouldn't be replaced, if everybody was worse than her. Why would they swap the greatest with something mediocre? Who would… replace her… replace her… _Shinji._

Shinji was the last person Asuka wanted on her mind. She was cold, trapped in an unfamiliar place that see-sawed between life and death. Shinji hadn't even been there. He was never there. He had let her get hurt, he had let her get killed – she was sure she wasn't alive anymore. He had done nothing, nothing to save her. He was nothing to Asuka, he deserved nothing from Asuka…

So why was he creeping into her thoughts, when all she wanted was to curl up and just allow death to run its course?

Asuka didn't realise she was crying until the tears landed on her knees, and she hadn't realised her knees were even pressed up to her face in the first place. How long had she been there? Asuka was so unsure.

If this were death, then Asuka decided pretty quickly she didn't enjoy it at all. It was cold, empty, dark, and, most of all, lonely. All Asuka wanted was to go back and return to before the Eva series, before the mental contamination, before Japan, before piloting the Eva, before…

Before…

 _Shinji…_

Asuka placed her head in her hands, ignoring the slight ache in her right one as she shook her head, hot tears beading and running down her cheeks before dripping off her chin and landing in the perfect cusp of her hands. She let the tears continue as she tried to shriek,

"Why? Why are you here?"

When she wanted the words to come out strong and defiant in a scream akin to a battle cry, they instead cracked out, breathy and pathetic, no louder than a whisper. She truly was alone. She had never been so alone…

"Why do I want you here?"

That one never made it past her mind. She never wanted to say it aloud. Her throat started to isolate itself as the tears poured out in a stream down her face, preventing her from saying anything aloud. Her body trembled as she sobbed and hiccuped, her breathing short and strained.

If this were death… the thought wouldn't leave Asuka's mind. The more she thought it, the more truthful it started to seem. This had to be death – nothing in life felt comparable to this. And if she were still living, then she wouldn't have felt something wash over her, a feeling, a feeling that took longer than normal to realise.

It was regret.

She regretted never holding Shinji. She regretted never kissing him again. Most of all, she regretted never setting aside her pride for just one damn second to vocalise all her thoughts. _I need you please don't leave me please don't replace me don't go don't go you can't go I want you here why aren't you here please come back and_

And…

The tears must have robbed her of all the breath in her lungs, as Asuka soon fell unconscious again.


	2. Waldeinsamkeit I

[ **AN** ] Thank you for the support with this so far!

[ **Edit** ] Same with previous chapter as I tweaked a few things pointed out to me by Merchant of Blue Death.

* * *

 **CHAPTER II: Waldeinsamkeit**

[German]

[noun] consisting of two words ('wald' meaning forest, 'einsamkeit' meaning loneliness), Waldeinsamkeit refers to the feeling of being alone in the woods.

* * *

 **PART ONE**

The full moon appeared from behind the clouds, the only thing illuminating the starless sky. The first sensation that hit Asuka was the cold night air on her arms and legs. The second sensation was an overbearing feeling that she'd been here before.

Asuka's body felt heavy beneath her, like she wasn't in charge of piloting it anymore, like it was a useless slab of meat loosely and pathetically clinging to her spine. Yet, she still felt placed within it, body and mind alike, even if, in a sense, it felt like it didn't belong to her. She glanced downwards, just to be sure; it was definitely her blossoming body underneath a long, light green collared button-up dress. Why she had chosen to wear a dress lacking sleeves or chosen to forgo tights on her legs was the least of her concerns when reality around her felt like a lucid dream.

The third sensation to run its course around Asuka's senses was the fact that her arms were up, her hands behind her head, cushioned by warm locks of her long hair. The cold air biting her armpits was definitely making her start to regret not at least bringing a jacket to put over her dress, but the weirdest feeling to surge through Asuka in that moment was the realisation that her right arm felt normal, how it should – how it did. And yet, Asuka couldn't quite work out why that was a concern. Why wouldn't her right arm feel like it should do? Nothing had happened yet. There was no reason why it would feel any different than normal…

That was when Asuka turned her head to her left slightly, her eyes landing upon an older male mirroring her own pose. In that same moment, she remembered probably just why she had decided to wear the tightest dress she owned and why she had purposely forgotten to bring along a jacket. Seeing Kaji beside her reminded Asuka of where she was, as if she had ever left. His presence alone seemed to calm Asuka's unexplainable forebodings of dread, as if surmising Kaji would end up in some terrible, life-ending situation, as she began to realise how irrational it sounded. She wasn't psychic. But it did nothing to heal the overwhelming feeling she had done this before, been here before, lived through this before, that hit her like nausea.

"Man, I guess we will be in Japan by tomorrow. And Misato said she'd come pick me up by lunch."

Asuka's voice pierced the silence, but she spoke for just two reasons: one, to garner a response from Kaji and end the uncomfortable silence hovering between them, and two, just to see if the voice that came out was hers. It was. When Kaji didn't respond, Asuka kept speaking,

"Oh, Misato's the person who was in Germany before you, Mr. Kaji." A pause. No response. She kept trying. "I don't really like her much. The way she lives is so affected."

Asuka wasn't sure at what point in her rambling she stopped talking about Misato and began talking about herself. She also began to realise something crucial about herself – she spoke just to prod a reaction out of Kaji, out of anyone, that often led to negative comments, ones she often projected onto others perhaps to absolve herself of any blame or to prevent similar comments about herself from other people. It hadn't been a problem before, so Asuka couldn't quite deduce why it was becoming a problem now.

When he still wasn't responding, Asuka tried again, "Man, I guess this is going to be goodbye for a while. That's so boring!" _Please just respond already,_ Asuka found herself wanting to say. _Break this silence. Tell me this is reality and I'm just being stupid. Stop ignoring me. Don't ignore me. Stop ignoring me. Don't ignore me don't ignore me don't ignore_

"Once you get to Japan, I'm sure you'll make lots of new boyfriends." A gruff voice finally responded to her. Asuka let out a breath she didn't know she had been holding. Asuka had nothing to worry about. In fact, she had to be in reality now – there was no way she couldn't be, when Kaji's voice spoke so clearly. Asuka hadn't memorised his voice so well that she could imagine scenarios involving it… surely not… no, that's ridiculous, _you're being ridiculous_ …

"I hear the Third Child is a boy."

…so why did Asuka's heart begin to pump that much faster in her chest at the mention of the Third Child? It had to just be because she realised going to Japan meant working alongside two other pilots who were nowhere near being on par with her superior abilities. She'd been training for years, she was elite, _the best_ – she was just a little shaken at the reminder of her fellow pilots, no, her competition. It had to be it.

"Are you kidding me?!" This one felt new, her words now the last remaining puzzle piece to complete all her previous concerns over whether anything was real or not. She'd heard about dissociating and being in a dissociative state from briefly studying psychology at college, and she'd researched into it for a group project before that in middle school, before she was advanced into college shortly after her twelfth birthday. Maybe she had just randomly slipped into a dissociative state, and now she was returning to earth and her body with the help of Kaji's voice.

"Like I care about stupid brats. All boys are the same, just wanting the same thing, no matter if they're Eva pilots." Asuka had an urge to roll over all of a sudden, to wrap her arms around Kaji and whisper words to him she'd only really said under her breath in her own company. Some weird, lingering thought in the back of her mind surfaced, suggesting she offered her body to him. She swallowed it. She also had an urge to inquire more about the Third Child, the feeling of déjà vu never truly leaving her. Had they met? No, they couldn't have. Asuka couldn't even recall his name. She swallowed that one, too.

"Listen, Asuka," Kaji's stern voice pinged Asuka back to the situation around her, and she realised how dangerously lost she was growing in her thoughts. The surprise of Kaji's voice in the silence almost made Asuka gasp. "Give him a chance. You'll end up giving yourself more chances in the process. You'll surprise yourself."

Though Kaji was speaking quietly, his voice raised no louder than a whisper, he still sounded like a father lecturing his daughter; the calmness resonating in his voice was probably the part Asuka hated the most.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Asuka didn't mean to yell, or to even raise her voice at all – or perhaps she did. Perhaps she was desperately pleading with Kaji to explain what the hell was going on. It was supposed to be a good thing, a sense of familiarity around someone, but this was an almost eerie, uncomfortable sense of familiarity. Yet, the differences were even more uncomfortable; Asuka found herself fearing the unknown. The fact she no longer had no idea what was going to happen, or even what was happening at that current moment, scared Asuka, as much as she didn't want to admit it to neither Kaji nor herself.

Kaji never offered an answer to her question.

* * *

Asuka's reflection stared back at her in the bathroom mirror, her own blue eyes in the glass feeling like they were looking straight through her. Her hands gripped the sides of the sink as she let the water keep pouring out the faucet, droplets of water rolling down her chin after washing her face and brushing her teeth for bed. _Give him a chance… giving yourself more chances… you'll surprise yourself._ What did that even mean? It shouldn't have been that unusual for Kaji to offer cryptic, almost philosophical advice – he did it a lot. But this time… this time, it felt like it didn't even make sense. Why was Kaji so concerned with whether she gave a stupid brat a chance or not? He was going to be her competition, ally at best – if she decided he didn't annoy her, that is.

This bathroom felt so claustrophobic, like the walls were closing in on Asuka; for the night, Asuka had to sleep in a boring, beige cabin on a ship as she and Kaji head to Japan. She had been stubborn, only agreeing to stay on the ship if she had the room closest to the bathroom. With a bat of her eyelashes and the addition of a sickly-sweet lilt in her tone, she had even bagged a room so close it was almost en suite. It was nothing compared to Asuka's personal en suite bedroom home in Germany, incomparable in neither size nor grandeur. Even if she had snagged the best bathroom, it was still a tiny space no larger than her closet at home. It was making her feel sick.

Asuka pulled down her bottom eyelid, just to see if she was actually getting sick or anything – maybe it was the whole being on a boat thing that was inducing some sort of delirium. That was a plausible, logical situation. Her eyelids were their normal bright pink, again, nothing to worry about, but there was something slightly concerning in the way her body shivered as she let go of the skin underneath her left eye.

"Give him a chance, huh?" Asuka repeated to her reflection, staring straight at herself as her reflection stared right back through her. 'I'll surprise myself.'

* * *

[ **A/N** ] I decided I would split the second chapter into two halves as I don't really want chapters to exceed more than two thousand words. The next part of this chapter will deal with the beginning of episode eight in canon and, to begin with, it may seem in line with canon due to Asuka's stubborn personality not exactly wanting to co-operate at first with finally opening up to Shinji, haha. Thanks for reading!


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